You Are Old, Father William

"You are old, father William," the young man said,
    "And your hair has become very white;
  And yet you incessantly stand on your head —
    Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

  "In my youth," father William replied to his son,
    "I feared it would injure the brain;
  But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
    Why, I do it again and again."

-- Lewis Carrol, from Alice in Wonderland.

Ten rock concerts, in ten days.  Alone or with friends, bands you like or bands you've never heard of, shitfaced on whisky or sitting in sober contemplation. Ten rock concerts in ten days, that's the plan.

I've been back in New York for four and a half years, but I haven't really been making time for the things that I love about New York, the things that drew me back here after small-town stops in Kingston, NY and in Martos,  Spain.  

A big part of what I love about New York is the rock 'n roll spirit that suffuses the city.  Over dinner recently, my friend's mom tried to argue that Washington, D.C. was a better place to live than NYC, because it has more museums and better museums for free.  I was willing to concede that (although I pointed out that the Met is free if you want it to be), but debating museums missed the point, for me.  You can keep the Smithsonian; I prefer museums that have been lived in, like the grimy bathrooms at CBGB (well, I guess not THAT particular museum).

The beautiful thing about New York, I told her, is that you can see an awesome show any day of the goddamn week. And so a challenge formed in my brain - I'll see a week of shows.  

My thirtieth birthday is coming up, and as with many milestones, it has prompted some self-reflection. I've spent the latter part of my twenties sucked into a job that was planned as a two-year stopover, losing friends one by one as they left the city, dutifully putting third of my paycheck towards my staggering student loan burden, generally acting like a boring, responsible person. 

And I'm getting to notice my age.  Somewhere in the back of mind mind, I'd expected to take some extravagant risks, drugs or a military career, maybe, that would guarantee an early exit before I turned into an actual "person of advanced age."  But recent evidence suggests that that will not be my fate - I've played it safe, and am settling into the life of slow decay that most of us are destined for. 

I play beer-league softball in the summer,  running for the first time in months, and my legs took days to recover. From beer-league softball! My occasional insomnia leaves me barely able to function on some days, and hangovers and heartburn are, apparently, now a thing.  My father died last year, and although he lived to 83, seeing him broken down renewed my fear not just of death, which I've wrestled with since I was a small child who prayed for the souls of all the ants I unwitting stepped on on my way to school, but of the inevitable decline of mind and body that precede that final oblivion. 

In short:  I am old, Father William, and I want to prove to myself that I still have time to stand on my head (figuratively speaking).

So I'm warding off my neuroses with a black magic cocktail of reverb-soaked vocals, distorted guitar  and drums that hit hard like the Hammer of Thor. I'll probably also see the Blow. 

Like any black magic ritual, this one needs strict rules, and a bit of sacrifice that puts it out of reach for the casually-committed among us.  A show every day, without break, without fail, without concern for companionship or the impact on my wallet. And because a week seemed just a little, well, weak, I went for a nice, round number, 10, to match the nice, round 30 of my impending birthday. 

Tonight, I start with the Raveonettes, whose "Last Dance" is the most sugary, danceable ode to suicidal overdose I've ever heard. Tonight, Rocktober starts a day early.